Archive for category: Halifax Screening Picks

It took 35 years, but a second Blade Runner instalment has arrived. I will hopefully have more to say about it in the next day or two, but if forced to boil down my reaction, I will say Blade Runner 2049 is both an unprecedented visual marvel, and inexcusably retrograde from a feminist point of view—the latter fact seemingly contributing to its underperformance at the box office.

Wednesday in Wolfville, you can check out a well-regarded animated feature that hasn’t played in Nova Scotia since 2016’s Atlantic Film Festival—Window Horses (The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming). Alissa Simon wrote in Variety that “the film provides a counterweight to our xenophobic times, proving that human beings are more alike than unalike and that poetry can be relevant across millennia.”

This Sunday at Carbon Arc’s screening room at the Museum of Natural History, there is another Iranian film screening in Halifax, but Oxidan hasn’t been to the festivals so it’s impossible to find an English-language review online. Interestingly though, this comedy by director Hamed Mojhammadi, about a man who impersonates a Catholic priest to get a visa to the UK, has been attacked by conservative Iranian MPs and threatened with a ban, apparently for “insults against holy religions” and the possibility of causing discord among the great Iranian people.”

Wednesday the Cineplex Studio Ghibli retrospective continues with the Japanese-language version of director Hayao Miyazaki’s classic debut, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, playing at Park Lane and Dartmouth Crossing.

Long Time Running, the new documentary by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier that charts the 2016 goodbye tour of The Tragically Hip, is “deeply sad and positively triumphant” and “everything we need it to be,” says Norm Wilner. It’s exclusively at Cineplex Park Lane.

David Gordon Green has had a strange, zig-zagging directorial career but his latest, Stronger, a Boston Marathon bombing aftermath story, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tatiana Maslany, seems like it might be worth a look.

Long Time Running, the new documentary by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier that charts the 2016 goodbye tour of The Tragically Hip, is “deeply sad and positively triumphant” and “everything we need it to be,” says Norm Wilner. It’s exclusively at Cineplex Park Lane.

David Gordon Green has had a strange, zig-zagging directorial career but his latest, Stronger, a Boston Marathon bombing aftermath story, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tatiana Maslany, seems like it might be worth a look.

Sunday the Cineplex Studio Ghibli retrospective continues with the English dub of director Hayao Miyazaki’s classic debut, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, playing at Park Lane and Dartmouth Crossing.

Saturday (Sep 16) — Ava, 5:45pm [info/tickets] This drama from Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Sadaf Foroughi played the Discovery section of this year’s TIFF to strong notices… this is a director on the way up.

Monday (Sep 18) — Black Cop*, 6:30pm [info/tickets] Nova Scotia’s own Cory Bowles has expanded a short film into a feature that has debuted at TIFF to strong reviews—it is a vital and riveting feature-directorial debut.

Wednesday (Sep 20) — BPM (Beats Per Minute), 6:30pm [info/tickets] This “sprawling, thrilling” AIDS activist drama took the Grand Prix, effectively second prize, at Cannes earlier this year.
— Happy End*, 9:30pm [info/tickets] Some will find Michael Haneke’s shocks no longer so shocking; others, as usual, will find that they go too far. Others, perhaps, like me will appreciate the way the film knits together some of his previous themes (and indeed characters) and admire yet another fine performance from Isabelle Huppert.

Thursday (Sep 21) Call Me By Your Name*, 7:00pm [info/tickets] The combination of Luca Guadagnino’s direction with a James Ivory script makes magic in this coming-of-age 1980s-Italy-set gay romance. Great choice for the closing gala.
— The Florida Project, 9:50pm [info/tickets] An exciting late add to the festival, this drama featuring Willem Dafoe is the follow-up project from Sean Baker, who turned heads in a major way with Tangerine.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is back in a sparkling restored 40th anniversary edition, while the film can be restored, its cultural moment is very much history. And speaking of culture and history, Yiddish cinema is back, and now is your opportunity to catch “a rare example of Yiddish neorealism” on local screens in Menashe.

The Trip to Spain is garnering positive reviews, though not at the level of its essential, brilliant predecessors, The Trip and The Trip to Italy, but this review by David Ehrlich has me hoping for another fine instalment. But honestly it doesn’t matter—if Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon decide their next collaboration entails reading their grocery lists, I am here for it.

It’s a good week in Halifax for fans of Japanese animation. At Park Lane you can see In This Corner of the World, a coming of age tale set in pre-war Japan, and based on a manga that ran from 2007 to 2009. Nerdist.com says that, according to the press notes, director Sunao “Katabuchi and his team spent years researching how Kure and Hiroshima looked at the time, making sure every building, house on the hill, Japanese naval vessel in the harbor, and even road was historically accurate.” And on Sunday there is another instalment of this year’s Studio Ghibli retrospective, with the English dub of Castle in the Sky playing at Dartmouth Crossing and Park Lane.